We live in a very fast-paced world in 2024, with high expectations and a rush to achieve our many goals. This is why in the past year, 91% of UK adults have experienced high or extreme levels of pressure or stress. To counter this, we must ensure that we also make way for restful downtime.
To help the public recover effectively, the experts at Mattress Online have provided readers with a guide on how you can find your ‘sleep window’, and the practices you can put in place to maintain it.
What is a sleep window?
Finding your sleep window can be extremely beneficial to your health and help to create a robust routine – but what is the sleep window? A sleep window is the optimal window in which you should fall asleep, to get an effective rest.
Whilst each person’s sleep window will be different, dictated by their lifestyles and preferences, sticking to a consistent sleep window will aid in healthy sleep and generate a good bedtime routine..
Expert tips for establishing your sleep window
If you’re someone who is yet to discover what their routine should look like, the experts at Mattress Online have provided some tips to help readers find their sleep window.
1. Tracing your steps
The best place to start is by looking at a typical day in your life and asking yourself, what time would I usually get up? From here you can rewind 8 hours to find the optimal time that you should be heading to sleep. As an example, if you’re someone who needs to get up at 7am, then you should aim to be asleep by 11pm.
2. Limiting your Caffeine intake
Caffeine is a staple in most people’s everyday life, whether it comes from coffee, tea, or a can of energy drink. It’s unrealistic to assume that everyone will cut out caffeine altogether, but try to limit your intake past the hours of mid-day, this way you’ll gain a more accurate representation of when you need to hit the hay without any peaks or troughs in energy levels.
3. Planning your meals
A common mistake that people make is eating a meal too late or snacking before bed. This can lead to your body finding issues in carrying out digestion from being led down, as well as giving you acid reflux late into the night and hindering the quality of sleep that you may have. As a rule of thumb, aim to eat your last bites between 2-3 hours before you go to bed.
4. Removing electronics
In the age of social media, screen times are on the rise with UK residents boasting a shocking 3 hours of mobile phone use daily. We know that blue light is bad for sleep and will be a contributing factor to overstimulating the mind. But also, the content which you consume can have negative effects and add to the level of stress you are under, which isn’t ideal when you’re trying to sleep. Aim to put down your devices at least an hour before you get your head down, or better yet, remove them from the bedroom altogether.
5. Setting a Schedule
As simple as it may sound, scheduling your day out can be pivotal in aiding your sleep window as it means that you won’t be rushing around by the final hours of the day, allowing yourself to switch off properly and effectively.
6. Relaxation is key
Ensure that the latter stages of your day are occupied by activities that are centered around relaxation and self-care. This can be something as simple as taking a bath, or listening to a chilled music playlist, or if you want to include a skin-care routine that will help signify that now is the time to relax. All of these activities can send your brain signals that will let it know that the sleep window is now approaching.
How to maintain your sleep window
Clare Longstaffe is a hypnotherapist at Cavendish Cancer Care, where those who are being supported commonly experience sleep issues and fatigue. Clare shares some extremely helpful and valid points surrounding this topic which can be found below.
She explains that in the modern day there is something called “hustle culture” which we have all been witness to. This culture is one that prides successful entrepreneurial figures with their go, go, go attitude and their ability to have so little sleep, yet be extremely successful. This paints sleep to be a luxury, when in actual fact it’s a necessity, just like eating or drinking. Clare reinforces this by stating “The most important element of good sleep is understanding what works for you without stressing.”
This FOMO attitude towards life that is portrayed is not sustainable by any means and will only eventually burn you out. This is why breaks from your mobile phone before bed can be so pivotal in ensuring a good night’s sleep as content is created in this day and age to grab your attention span and generate this consistent cliff-hanger feeling of needing and wanting more, when in actuality, there’s never an end to it.
Clare Longstaffe also states that “The child within us wants to keep us awake and make the most of the day, which can cause us to feel wired even as we prepare to sleep.”
This is because we are programmed to always be looking for the next thing to ensure we feel like we’ve done enough, when in reality the benefits of a strong, consistent sleep pattern can have an endless positive impact on your productivity.
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